ADAM  BEDE   GIVES  A  ROSE  TO  HETTY. 

With  a  sudden  impulse  of  gaiety  she  did  what  she 

had  very  often  done   before — stuck  the  rose  in  her 

hair  a  little  above  the  left  ear. 

(Adam  Bede.) 


A  DAY  WITH 

GEORGE 
ELIOT 

BY  MAURICE   CLARE 


NEW  YORK 

HODDER  &  STOUGHTQN 


In  the  same  Series. 

Thackeray. 

Dickens. 

Stevenson. 

Charlotte  Bronte. 

Kingsley. 

Emerson. 

Hawthorne. 


A  DAY  WITH  GEOKGE  ELIOT. 


T  is  an  October  morning  in  the 
later  'sixties,  bright,  bracing, 
breezy,  with  sufficient  "tang" 
in  the  air  to  justify  a  fire  despite 
the  brilliant  sunshine.  The 
London  trees  have  taken  on  an 
unmistakable  tinge  of  autumn, 
and  the  London  gardens  have  not  much  to 
show.  That  very-much-frequented  house,  The 
Priory,  in  North  Bank,  Regent's  Park,  is  only 
now,  at  eight  a.m.,  opening  its  eyes  awake — 
or  in  other  words,  drawing  back  its  blinds  and 
curtains.  Few  houses  in  London,  it  is  said, 
"  have  been  the  scene  of  stronger  and  more 
interesting  emotions  "  :  but  the  Priory  does  not 
wear  its  heart  upon  its  sleeve,  and  nobody 
would  guess  from  its  stolid  and  reserved  exterior 
that  it  was  a  species  of  Mecca  to  the  "cultured" 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE     ELIOT. 

of  all  sorts  and  conditions.  For,  some  fifty 
years  ago,  it  required,  "if  not  a  genuine  strength 
of  mind,  at  any  rate  a  certain  amount  of 
1  cussedness  '  not  to  be  a  George  Eliotite  "  ;  and 
the  authoress  of  Adam  Bede  was  alternately 
revered  as  a  saint,  respected  as  a  sibyl,  and 
regarded  as  the  greatest  of  living  novelists,  by 
her  various  and  multitudinous  admirers. 


The  big,  bony,  heavy-featured  woman, 
who  appears  in  her  own  eyes  as  only  capable 
of  "kindling  unpleasant  sensations,  with  a 
palpitating  heart  and  awkward  manners,"  and 
who  is  the  object  of  unfaltering,  enthusiastic 
worship  on  the  part  of  so  many  friends,  comes 
slowly  out  of  her  bedroom  into  her  large  study 
on  the  first  floor,  and  casts  a  somewhat  depre- 
cating glance  upon  her  writing-table,  strewn 
with  papers.  In  front  of  this  table  stands  a 
cast  of  the  Melian  yEsculapius  :  it  looks  at  her 
with  a  dumbly  self-reproachful  air,  as  of  one 
whose  skill  availed  nought  to  counteract  her 
almost  incessant  ill-health.  The  books  lying 
here  and  there  are  almost  suggestive  of  their 
owner's  most  constant  malaises, — headache  and 


A    DAY    WITH     GEORGE     ELIOT. 

cold  feet :  their  very  titles  are  oppressive  to 
the  average  mind.  For  George  Eliot — or  Mrs. 
Lewes,  as  she  is  more  usually  known — is  read- 
ing aloud  to  Mr.  Lewes,  o'  nights,  such  imposing 
and  monumental  works  as  Plato's  Republic, 
Nisard's  History  of  French  Literature,  Lecky's 
History  of  Morals,  and  Herbert  Spencer's 
Psychology ;  not  to  mention  the  consumption  of 
such  hors  d'ceuvres  and  "kickshaws"  as  the 
works  of  Lucretius,  Theocritus,  Sainte  Beuve, 
Becker's  Charicles,  and  a  vast  variety  of  minor 
volumes  in  five  or  six  different  languages.  It 
would  be  difficult,  indeed,  to  gather,  from  the 
ponderous  character  of  her  miscellaneous  reading 
that  this  woman  is  the  creator  of  such  im- 
mortal types, — brimming  with  quaint  provincial 
humour — as  Mrs.  Poyser  {Adam  Bede)  or  Aunt 
Glegg  (Mill  on  the  Floss).  Still  more  difficult, 
when  you  realize,  from  personal  acquaintance 
with  her,  the  extraordinary  seriousness  of 
George  Eliot, — the  gravity  with  which,  in  her 
eyes,  the  smallest  detail  of  life  is  weighted. 
"The  sense  of  the  importance  of  every  action 
and  every  word,  indeed  of  every  influence 
which  she  might  exercise  over  her  fellow- 
creatures   .    .    .    the  momentous   issues   of  the 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

thoughts  and  emotions  which  slowly  build  up 
the  moral  character," — these  have  deprived  her 
of  that  sense  of  laughter,  in  ordinary  affairs, 
which  is  such  a  help  and  solace  to  its  possessor. 
She  never  says  a  smile-provoking  thing  :  never 
writes  one  in  her  letters  :  her  vivid  and 
admirable  perception  of  all  that  makes  for 
gaiety  is  exclusively  confined  to  her  novels. 
Here  she  patiently  develops  her  characters  in 
"rather  slow  but  humorous  dialogue,  such 
as  Shakespeare  loved  to  interpolate  in  his  plays 
when  he  chose  to  show  us  how  the  '  Goodman 
Dull'  of  the  Midlands  talked  awry."  And 
even  here,  while  allowing  that  "  I  have  no 
stock  of  proverbs  in  my  memory,  and  there  is 
not  one  thing  put  into  Mrs.  Poyser's  mouth 
which  is  not  fresh  from  my  own  mint,"  she  has 
confessed  that  "my  books  are  deeply  serious 
things  to  me,  and  come  out  of  all  the  painful 
discipline,  all  the  most  hardly-learned  lessons  of 
my  past  life." 


Mr.  Lewes  enters  the  study,  and  they  go 
down  to  breakfast  together.  He  is  in  many 
respects  the  exact  antithesis  of  George  Eliot. 


A     DAY    WITH    GEORGE     ELIOT. 

Not  only  do  his  bright  eyes  strongly  contrast 
with  her  pensive,  penetrating,  grey-blue  ones, 
his  long  black  hair  with  her  abundant  masses  of 
auburn-brown  ;  but  his  ready  wit  and  urbanity 
are  a  singular  foil  to  her  somewhat  sombre  and 
impressive  manner.  "A  Mirabeau  in  mina- 
ture,"  she  termed  him  when  first  they  met. 
They  are  both,  however,  of  a  "lean  and  hungry 
aspect." — "Happiness,"  she  has  complained, 
"  of  which  we  seem  to  have  more  than  anyone 
I  know,  does  not  have  the  effect  of  making  us 
fat  and  strong.  I  often  compare  ourselves  to 
two  mediaeval  saints  painted  by  a  very  naive 
master."  .  .  .  And  in  the  most  essential  point 
of  all  they  are  alike — deep  and  devoted  mutual 
affection.  "  Always  exceedingly  dependent  on 
some  one  person  for  affection  and  support," 
George  Eliot  has  found  in  George  Lewes  the 
exact  fulfilment  of  all  that  most  she  needs.  He 
is  the  staff  on  which  she  leans  for  strength, 
the  sympathetic  yet  expert  critic  of  her  work, 
the  tenderest,  warmest,  of  her  many  devotees. 
"Without  his  insight  into  literary  faculty,  and 
his  sustaining  sympathy,  it  is  doubtful  whether 
she  would  have  produced  the  writings  which 
have  made  her  fame." 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE     ELIOT. 

And  while  he  regards  "  Polly"  as  being  at 
once  a  supreme  genius  and  the  best,  most 
lovable  of  women,  she  holds  fast  by  him  as  the 
ivy  to  the  oak,  and  finds  that  "the  affections, 
instead  of  being  dulled  by  age,  have  acquired 
a  stronger  activity," —  "because,"  as  she  has 
written,  "  what  greater  thing  is  there  for  two 
human  souls  than  to  feel  that  they  are  joined 
for  life,  to  strengthen  each  other  in  all  pain,  to 
be  one  with  each  other  in  silent  unspeakable 
memories  at  the  moment  of  the  last  parting?" 
And  she  has  exemplified,  to  the  letter,  in  the 
course  of  her  life,  the  theory  that  "  a  supreme 
love,  a  motive  that  gives  a  sublime  strength  to 
a  woman's  life,  and  exalts  habit  into  partnership 
with  her  soul's  highest  needs,  is  not  to  be  had 
how  and  when  she  wills  :  to  know  that  high 
initiation  she  must  often  tread  where  it  is  hard 
to  tread,  and  feel  the  chill  air,  and  walk  through 
darkness.  It  is  not  true  that  love  makes  all 
things  easy  :  it  makes  us  choose  what  is 
difficult." 


Therefore,   although  she  loves  to  portray 
some  blessed  and  perfected  union,  like  that  of 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE     ELIOT. 

Adam  Bede  and  Dinah  Morris,  she  has  attained, 
perhaps,  her  highest  note  in  the  delineation  of 
love  that  finds  its  goal  in  abnegation,  surrender 
and  self-sacrifice,  —  love  that  is  crowned  by 
death.  In  Maggie,  of  The  Mill  on  the  Floss, — 
Maggie,  in  whose  wild,  passionate,  unconven- 
tional nature  George  Eliot  consciously  or 
unconsciously  incorporated  much  of  herself, — 
she  has  reached  the  final  outcome  of  her  own 
belief  that  "  the  most  difficult  heroism  is  that 
which  consists  in  the  daily  conquests  of  our 
private  demons,  not  in  the  slaying  of  world- 
notorious  dragons." 


And  it  is  just  because  Maggie  Tulliver  is 
presented  to  us  as,  for  all  her  splendid  courage, 
so  very  human  a  creature,  that  she  remains, 
and  probably  will  remain,  one  of  the  best- 
beloved  memories  in  the  whole  great  realm  of 
fiction.  About  her  there  is  nothing  "icily 
regular,  faultlessly  null "  :  quite  the  contrary. 
11  If  the  ethics  of  art,"  George  Eliot  has 
declared,  "  do  not  admit  the  truthful  presenta- 
tion of  a  character  essentially  noble,  but  liable 
to  great  error — error  that  is  anguish  to  its  own 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

nobleness — then,  it  seems  to  me,  the  ethics  of 
art  are  too  narrow,  and  must  be  widened  to 
correspond  to  a  widening  psychology."  .  .  Yet 
"the  art  which  leaves  the  soul  in  despair  is 
laming  to  the  soul,  and  is  denounced  by  the 
healthy  sentiment  of  an  entire  community." 
So  she  has  set  Maggie  Tulliver,  in  the  extreme 
of  her  sorrow  and  perplexity,  upon  an  immortal 
pinnacle,  above  the  placid  and  complacent  flood 
of  the  ordinary  "  happy  ending."  And  her 
record  closes,  not  to  the  tintinnabulation  of 
wedding  bells,  but  to  the  roar  and  rush  of  flood- 
ing waters,  in  that  final  conflict  when  "  there 
was  at  least  this  fruit  from  all  her  years  of 
striving  after  the  highest  and  the  best, — that 
her  soul,  though  betrayed,  beguiled,  ensnared, 
could  never  deliberately  consent  to  a  choice  of 
the  lower."   .   . 


And  thus  we  see  her,  momentarily  re-united 
with  her  old  comrade  and  playmate,  as  the  mill- 
house  crumbles  in  the  flood.  .  .  .  '"Alone, 
Maggie?'  said  Tom  in  a  voice  of  deep  astonish- 
ment, as  he  opened  the  middle  window  on  a  level 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE     ELIOT. 

with  the  boat.     '  Yes,  Tom.    God  has  taken  care 
of  me,  to  bring  me  to  you.     Get  in  quickly.' " 


And  we  must  needs  recognise  and  "  love 
the  highest  when  we  see  it,"  on  learning,  almost 
with  relief,  the  immediately-following  solution 
of  Maggie's  bitter  problems  of  existence  : 
11  Brother  and  sister  had  gone  down  in  an 
embrace  never  to  be  parted,  living  through 
again  in  one  supreme  moment  the  days  when 
they  had  clasped  their  little  hands  in  love." 
(The  Mill  on  the  Floss.) 

.  .  .  .  Breakfast  over,  the  novelist  reads 
awhile,  as  is  her  wont,  in  her  Bible  :  a  large- 
print  volume  has  recently  been  given  her  by 
Mr.  Lewes  ;  her  abnormally  long-sighted  eyes 
are  beginning  to  show  the  strain  of  thirty-five 
years'  laborious  study.  For  you  must  understand 
that  George  Eliot  is  not,  has  never  been,  the 
facile  scribe  of  light-hearted  irresponsible  fiction. 
She  has  taken  up  novel-writing  comparatively 
late  in  life,  at  about  forty  years  of  age, — and 
then  only  in  deference  to  the  wish  and  advice 
of  Mr.  Lewes.     It  does  not  come  naturally  to 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

her,  either  ;  it  is  always  a  harassing  experience. 
"  I  could  no  more  live  through  one  of  my 
books,"  she  declares,  "  a  second  time,  than  I 
can  live  through  last  year  again."  Self-distrust, 
dejection,  depression,  despondency,  assail  her 
the  whole  length  of  the  way  throughout  a  story. 
"The  self-questioning  whether  my  nature  will 
be  able  to  meet  the  heavy  demands  upon  it, 
both  of  personal  duty  and  intellectual  produc- 
tion, bears  upon  me  almost  continually,  in  a 
way  that  prevents  me  ever  from  tasting  the 
quiet  joy  I  might  have  had  in  the  work  done. 
Buoyancy  and  exultation,  I  fancy,  are  out  of 
the  question  when  one  has  lived  as  long  as  I 
have."  .  .  No :  she  is  first  and  foremost  a 
student.  The  first  work  she  ever  thought  of 
writing,  when  still  quite  young,  was  "a 
synopsis  of  ecclesiastical  history,  demanding 
nothing  but  great  learning,  clear  thought,  and 
untiring  industry  and  ingenuity."  As  translator, 
as  editor,  as  coadjutor  to  Lewes  in  his  most 
onerous  literary  tasks,  she  has  still  "  kept  the 
force  and  flower  of  her  mind  for  philosophy," 
still  always  yearned,  at  the  back  of  her 
thoughts,  after  the  entirely  abstract  and  purely 
metaphysical.     And  although  she  has,  "  during 


MAGGIE  TULLIVER  RESCUES  TOM  AT  THE   MILL. 

"  Alone,   Maggie  ? "  said    Tom    in    a    voice    of    deep 
astonishment,  as  he  opened  the  middle  window  on  a 
level  with  the  boat. 
"  Yes,  Tom.     God  has  taken  care  of  me,  to  bring  me 

to  you.     Get  in  quickly." 

(The  Mill  on  the  Floss.) 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE     ELIOT. 

a  long  and  studious  youth,  received  impressions 
of  persons,  of  scenes,  of  books,"  and  has 
"travelled  and  enriched  her  store," — so  that 
she  is  able  to  set  down  bygone  impressions  with 
amazing  accuracy  of  detail, — as  in  Scenes  of 
Clerical  Life, — yet  she  is  rarely  able  to  assimilate 
what  one  may  call  life  up-to-date.  She  "never 
lives  in  the  open  "  :  she  is  kept  in  cotton-wool 
seclusion  and  safety,  so  far  as  may  be,  from  all 
adverse  influences.  She  has  no  experience  of 
active  business  :  all  her  affairs  are  transacted 
for  her :  the  taste  of  the  present,  active,  living, 
workaday  world  has  not  entered  her  life  these 
many  years.  She  must  depend  entirely  upon 
her  marvellous  memory,  with  its  wealth  of 
detail,  for  all  her  finest  work  :  and  where  that 
memory  cannot  be  utilised,  as  in  Romola, — when 
she  has  only  imagination  and  erudition  to  fall 
back  upon,  —  she  is  utterly  exhausted  by  the 
effort.  "  I  began  Romola  a  young  woman,"  she 
sighs,  "  I  finished  it  an  old  woman.  .  .  Great 
facts  have  struggled  to  find  a  voice  through  me, 
and  have  only  been  able  to  speak  brokenly." 

There,  in  a  few  words,  you  have  the  secret 
of  George   Eliot's   genius.       The   student,   the 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

philosopher,  the  recluse,  writes  novels  as  a 
medium  might.  M  My  stories  grow  in  me  like 
plants,"  she  has  avowed, — that  is,  without  her 
direct  knowledge  or  volition.  "It  almost 
seems  as  if  her  mind  had  been  intended  more 
as  an  instrument  for  interpreting  the  minds  of 
others,  more  as  a  phonograph  through  the 
agency  of  which  the  natures  of  all  the  various 
interlocutors  with  whom  she  met  could  be 
delicately  registered  and  made  to  report  them- 
selves to  the  world,  than  as  a  distinct  organ  of 
her  own  taste  and  purpose.  .  .  There  is  hardly 
a  country  squire  or  dairymaid  or  poacher  or 
inn-keeper  or  country  lad  or  lass  to  whom 
George  Eliot  does  not  give  a  thoroughly  indi- 
vidual voice."  And  where  she  speaks  in  her 
own  voice,  it  is  not  that  of  a  romancist  at  all. 
It  is  the  accent  of  one  whose  mission,  as  she 
conceives  it,  has  been  "to  paint  the  lives  of 
those  she  saw  about  her,  to  describe  their  joys 
and  sorrows,  their  successes  and  failures,  and, 
by  insisting  on  the  deep  importance  of  this 
world,  to  teach  us  to  hinder  as  little  as  possible 
the  good  which  is  lingering  around  us."  Or,  in 
her  own  words,  "  My  books  are  a  form  of 
utterance    ....    deliberately,  carefully  con- 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE     ELIOT. 

structed  on  a  basis  which  seen  in  my  doubting 
mind  is  never  shaken  by  a  doubt  .  .  .  my 
conviction  as  to  the  relative  goodness  and 
nobleness  of  human  dispositions  and  motives. 
And  the  inspiring  principle  which  alone  gives 
me  courage  to  write  is  that  of  so  presenting  our 
human  life  as  to  help  my  readers  in  getting  a 
clearer  conception  and  a  more  active  admiration 
of  those  vital  elements  which  bind  men  together 
and  give  a  higher  worthiness  to  their  existence. 
.  .  .  We  ought  each  of  us  not  to  sit  down 
and  wait,  but  to  be  heroic  and  constructive 
if  possible.    .    ." 


Now,  by  a  curious  paradox,  this  serious 
and  learned  woman  has  revealed  in  her  tales — 
most  likely  without  knowing  it — the  real  reason 
of  her  abnormal  gravity, — and  the  true  source 
of  her  superabundant  sympathy.  In  the  same 
manner  as  those  artists  usually  draw  children 
most  successfully,  who  have  none  of  their  own, 
so  George  Eliot — admirable  and  beloved  step- 
mother as  she  is  to  Mr.  Lewes's  three  boys — 
has  never  known  the  prattle  of  little  voices, 
of  children  waking  like  small  birds  in  the  early 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE     ELIOT. 

morning.  She  has  never  heard  the  headlong 
pattering  of  tiny  feet  upon  a  nursery  floor.  In 
a  word,  she  has  been  denied  the  chief  function 
and  supreme  joy  of  womanhood, — and  for  that 
very  cause,  perhaps,  she  can  delineate  childhood 
with  a  sweetness  of  touch,  an  accuracy  of 
rendering,  which  are  only  comparable  to  the 
canvases  of  Sir  Joshua,  and  which  are  never 
for  an  instant  strained,  incongruous,  or  other- 
wise than  exquisitely  right  and  true.  Hardly 
a  story  she  has  ever  achieved  but  contains  one 
or  more  of  these  delicious  little  chubby,  rosy 
figures  :  time  fails  to  enumerate  them.  Perhaps 
the  most  charmingly  conceived,  the  most  care- 
fully reproduced  of  all,  is  the  little  Eppie  in  Silas 
Marner.  This  tale,  which  "contains  all  her 
merits  in  high  perfection,  concentrated  by  the 
narrow  limits  in  which  the  work  is  enclosed," 
and  which  is  intended  to  "set  in  a  strong  light 
influences  of  pure,  natural,  human  relations," 
contains  this  unrivalled  study  of  infancy.  Very 
few  mothers  could  have  conveyed,  so  deftly,  so 
delicately,  the  infinite  gradations  of  growth  in 
the  child,  coupled  with  the  correspondent  growth 
in  the  case-hardened,  lonely  old  man.  Almost 
as  actual  spectators  of  the  process,  we  see  how 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

"As  her  life  unfolded,  his  soul,  long  stupefied 
in  a  cold  narrow  prison,  was  unfolding  too,  and 
trembling  gradually  into  full  consciousness  ;  " 
until,  as  months  lengthen  out  to  years,  it 
becomes  clear  that  "  Eppie,  with  her  short, 
toddling  steps,  must  lead  Father  Silas  a  pretty 
dance  on  any  fine  morning  when  circumstances 
favoured  mischief.  .  .  He  had  wisely  chosen 
a  broad  strip  of  linen  as  a  means  of  fastening 
her  to  his  loom  when  he  was  busy.  .  .  Having 
cut  the  linen  strip  in  a  manner  jagged  but 
effectual,  in  two  minutes  she  had  run  out  at  the 
open  door,  where  the  sunshine  was  inviting 
her,  while  poor  Silas  believed  her  to  be  a  better 
child  than  usual." 


There  is,  in  short,  hardly  any  one  of 
George  Eliot's  tales  in  which  this  tender  delight 
in  children  is  not  manifested  :  nor  are  the  little 
creatures  only  included  to  heighten  the  effect  of 
a  situation  :  they  take  a  normal  and  relevant 
part,  just  as  in  real  life.  And  one  is  enabled  to 
guess  what  Marian  Evans  might  once  have 
been,  —  the  joyful  mother,  united  at  all  points 
with   her   little   ones, — had   she   never  become 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE     ELIOT. 

George  Eliot,  the  famous  writer,  courted, 
adulated,  flattered  —  but  always  with  a  secret 
void  in  her  deep  and  womanly  heart. 


After  half-an-hour's  reading  of  the  Bible 
the  novelist  turns  to  her  correspondence,  which 
is  voluminous,  and  entails  considerable  toil. 
Constantly  in  communication  as  she  is  with  so 
many  well-known  folks  and  personal  acquaint- 
ances, she  undertakes,  according  to  the  habit  of 
the  time,  letters  of  what  might  seem  inordinate 
and  unnecessary  length.  And,  strange  to  say, 
they  more  than  ever  confirm  the  idea  that  she 
is  merely  a  medium  for  the  production  of  her 
imaginative  work.  For  these  private  letters, 
set  down  in  her  exquisite  handwriting,  with 
hardly  an  error  or  erasure,  are  but  poor  com- 
pared to  her  published  writings — stilted,  arti- 
ficial, and  monotonous  in  manner,  with  an  air 
of  intending  great  things  and  coming  extremely 
short  of  them.  They  are  almost  tedious — and 
compare  most  unfavourably  with  the  impres- 
siveness  of  her  spoken  words,  which,  uttered  in 
low,  vibrating,  musical  tones,  have  thrilled  so 
many   eager   listeners.      Yet   undoubtedly   she 


SILAS    MARNER  AT  HIS  LOOM. 

He  had  wisely  chosen  a  broad  strip  of  linen  as  a 
means  of  fastening  her  to  his  loom  when  he  was  busy. 

(Silas  Maimer.) 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE     ELIOT. 

enjoys  this  part  of  her  morning  ;  and  it  is  with 
a  certain  reluctance  that  she  puts  away  these 
more  personal  outpourings,  and,  lying  back 
in  a  comfortable  chair,  with  a  high  support 
to  her  feet,  starts  work  upon  a  manuscript 
placed  upon  her  knees.  "  In  this  way,"  she 
has  just  written  to  a  friend,  "I  get  advantage 
from  the  longsightedness  which  involves  the 
early  use  of  glasses.  .  .  But  it  is  vain  to  get 
one's  back  and  knees  in  the  right  attitude,  if 
one's  mind  is  superannuated.  Some  time  or 
other,  if  death  does  not  come  to  silence  me, 
there  ought  to  be  deliberate  abstinence  from 
writing — self-judgment  which  decides  that  one 
has  no  more  to  say." 


This  last  phrase  throws  a  suggestive  light 
upon  the  morbid  self-introspection  which  hinders 
her  at  the  very  outset  of  a  new  book  and  haunts 
her  throughout.  The  brooding  tendency  of  her 
mind,  which  bids  her  perpetually  "look  before 
and  after,  and  sigh  for  what  is  not " — yet 
without  any  very  definite  notion  of  what  might 
be  better  worth  having,  is  intensified  by  almost 
constant  ill-health  :    "I  could  have  done  much 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

more,"  she  says,  "  if  I  had  been  well :  but  that 
regret  applies  to  most  years  of  my  life."  And 
a  vague  yearning  towards  something  lost  or 
lacking  is  discernible  in  all  she  does, — whether 
expressed  in  dim  desire  towards  realms  unattain- 
able, as  in  the  plaintive  verses  from  the  Spanish 
Gypsy  — 

"  Spring  comes  hither, 

Buds  the  rose, 
Roses  wither, 

Sweet  spring  goes. 
Ojala,  would  she  carry  me  ! 

"  Summer  soars, 

Wide-winged  day 
White  light  pours, 
Flies  away, 
Ojala,  would  he  carry  me  ! 

"  South  winds  blow, 

Westward  borne, 
Onward  go 

Toward  the  morn, 
Ojala,  would  they  carry  me  ! 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE     ELIOT. 

"  Sweet  birds  sing 

O'er  the  graves, 
Then  take  wing 

O'er  the  waves, 
Ojala,  would  they  carry  me  !  " 


— or  in  that  characteristic  sotto-voce  burden  of 
sadness  which  underlies  her  finest  achievements, 
— that  "pitying  study  of  man,  in  the  frame  of 
mind  of  one  who  is  determined  to  make  the 
best  of  a  bad  business,"  that  "subdued  tone  of 
regret  that  the  highest  human  endeavour  is 
destined  to  be  baffled."  These  symptoms  of 
inherent  pessimism  are  not,  perhaps,  so  notice- 
able in  Adam  Bede  as  elsewhere.  She  has 
declared  herself  thankful  to  have  written  so 
true  a  book  as  Adam  Bede :  and  indeed,  it  con- 
tains a  wider  diapason  of  emotion,  besides  a 
happier  realisation  of  the  joy  of  life,  than  her 
other  volumes.  No  one  can  obliterate  from 
memory,  once  having  read,  the  charming 
picture  of  Hetty  Sorrel,  young,  childish,  and 
coquettish,  as  she  appears  in  the  earlier 
chapters— the  scene  in  the  dairy,  for  instance, 
with  Arthur  Donnithorne,  or  that  in  the  garden 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

among  the  currant  bushes,  when,  given  a  rose 
by  the  gigantic  Adam,  "  Hetty  took  the  rose 
....  and  with  a  sudden  impulse  of  gaiety 
she  did  what  she  had  very  often  done  before — 
stuck  the  rose  in  her  hair  a  little  above  the 
left  ear.  The  tender  admiration  in  Adam's 
face  was  slightly  shadowed  by  reluctant  dis- 
approval." .  .  . 


These  delicate  and  enchanting  little  episodes 
of  country  life  throw  into  darker  relief  such 
scenes — no  less  veracious — as  that  where  the 
betrayed  and  deserted  Hetty,  a  poor  little 
butterfly  with  broken  wings,  contemplates  an 
end  of  herself  in  the  wintry  pool.  "  She  set 
down  her  basket,  and  then  .  .  .  sat  still,  looking 
at  the  pool.  .  .  There  was  no  need  to  hurry — 
there  was  all  the  night  to  drown  herself  in." 


The  priceless  gift  of  sympathy,  George 
Eliot's  chief  claim  to  real  greatness,  is,  in  Adam 
Bede,  revealed  at  its  fullest.  "Creation,"  as 
she  has  put  it,  "is  the  super-added  life  of  the 
intellect  ;    sympathy,    all-embracing    love,    the 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE     ELIOT. 

super-added  moral  life.  .  .  Sympathy,  the  one 
poor  word  which  includes  all  our  best  insight 
and  all  our  best  love."  Assuredly  in  this 
poignant  sympathy  lies  the  secret  of  her  suc- 
cess :  for  she  contrives  to  enlist  our  own 
most  sympathetic  feelings  for  every  one  of  her 
dramatis  personae  in  turn.  The  fact  that  the 
story  of  Hetty  was  a  true  one  :  that  in  Adam 
Bede  himself  she  was  delineating  her  own  father, 
and  in  Dinah  Morris  her  aunt,  may  have  lent 
additional  strength  of  characterisation  to  George 
Eliot's  hand  in  this  particular  book.  But  sym- 
pathy, it  may  be  said,  is  her  gospel  of  life  :  the 
only  gospel  which  her  negative  creed  confesses. 
For,  although  she  has  passed  through  the 
Christian  experience,  and  maintained  through- 
out her  life  a  grave  and  reverent  regard  for  it : 
though  the  Imitation  of  Christ  is  her  life-long 
companion, — George  Eliot  is  not  a  nominal  or 
professing  Christian.  Presumably,  if  obliged  to 
affix  a  label  to  her  opinion,  she  would  style 
herself  a  Positivist.  She  feels  a  "yearning 
affection  towards  the  great  religions  of  the 
world  which  have  reflected  the  struggles  and 
the  needs  of  mankind."  And  she  repudiates 
the    idea   of   having   no    beliefs    of   her   own. 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

' '  I  have  too  profound  a  conviction  of  the 
efficacy  that  lies  in  all  sincere  faith,  and  the 
spiritual  blight  that  comes  with  no  faith.  .  . 
I  care  only  to  know  if  possible  the  last  meaning 
that  lies  in  all  religious  doctrines  from  the 
beginning  till  now."  The  true  Christian  ideal 
she  upholds  as  the  noblest  pattern  that  man  can 
follow.  But  of  individual  immortality  she  has 
no  hope  :  and  this  blank  outlook  towards  the 
eternal  future  throws  a  melancholy  shadow 
over  every  output  of  her  mind.  To  her,  "it  is 
a  pang  to  witness  the  suffering  of  a  fellow- 
creature,  and  I  feel  his  suffering  the  more 
because  he  is  mortal,  because  his  life  is  so  short, 
and  I  would  have  it  if  possible  filled  with  happi- 
ness and  not  misery.  In  some  minds  the  deep 
pathos  lying  in  the  thought  of  human  mortality 
— that  we  are  here  for  a  little  while  and  then 
vanish  away — that  this  earthly  life  is  all  that  is 
given  to  our  loved  ones,  and  to  many  suffering 
fellowmen — lies  nearer  the  fountains  of  moral 
emotion  than  the  conception  of  extended 
existence."  So  that  her  sole  residuum  of  what 
once  was  a  practical  working  Christianity,  the 
only  religion  which  can  be  distinctly  attributed 
to  this   gifted   but  dissatisfied  woman,   is  "the 


HETTY  SORREL  AT  THE   POOL. 

She  set  down  her  basket  and  then  .  .  .  sat  still,  look- 
ing at  the  pool.  .  .  There  was  no  need  to  hurry — 
there  was  all  the  night  to  drown  herself  in. 

(Adam  Bede.) 


PJf 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

expression  of  the  sense  of  human  fellowship 
with  an  influence  strong  enough  to  compel  us  to 
live  for  others,  even  though  it  be  beneath  the 
in-coming  shadow  of  an  endless  night." 


This  "sense  of  human  fellowship"  runs 
like  a  silver  thread  through  Middlemarch,  the 
novel  upon  which  she  is  now  tentatively  engaged. 
It  is  the  very  key  to  the  lovable  mistakes  and 
noble  loyalties  of  Dorothea,  perhaps  the  best 
portrait  in  all  George  Eliot's  gallery  of  sweet 
and  noble  women  :  the  gallant  little  Mary 
Garth  is  actuated  by  it  throughout.  You  will 
find  it  gleaming  here  and  there  with  pleasant 
lustre,  across  all  those  studies  of  English  lower 
middle-class  life,  and  of  Midland  farmers  and 
tradesmen,  which  are  "hardly  surpassed  in 
English  literature."  It  is,  indeed,  one  may  say, 
the  message  of  all  George  Eliot's  authorship. 
Excellent  as  her  plots  are,  subtly  drawn  as  her 
abundant  detail  may  be,  they  are  subordinated 
to  the  sense  of  human  interdependence  :  for, 
as  she  says,  "The  older  the  world  gets,  origi- 
nality becomes  less  possible.  Great  subjects 
are  used  up,  and  civilization  tends  evermore  to 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

repress  individual  predominance,  highly-wrought 
agony,  or  ecstatic  joy.  But  all  the  gentle 
emotions  will  be  ever  new,  ever  wrought  up 
into  more  and  more  lovely  combinations.  .  .  . 
No  mind  that  has  any  real  life  is  a  mere  echo  of 
emotion.  If  the  perfect  music  comes  occasion- 
ally, as  in  music,  it  ought  to  harmonize.  It  is 
like  a  diffusion  or  expansion  of  one's  own  life, 
to  be  assured  that  its  vibrations  are  repeated 
in  another." 


About  noon  Mr.  Lewes  appears,  solicitous 
as  to  "Polly's"  overdoing  herself,  and  wishful, 
according  to  his  wont,  to  hear  what  she  has 
written  this  morning.  Holding  the  MS.  in  her 
thin,  transparent,  beautifully-shaped  hands,  and 
giving  it  the  full  benefit  of  her  rich  voice  and 
exquisite  elocution,  she  reads  aloud  to  him  some 
forty  or  fifty  pages.  "The  best  work  you 
have  yet  done,"  he  reassures  her,  catching  her 
anxious  and  expectant  gaze  as  she  awaits  his 
critical  verdict.  "  You  sometimes  imagine,"  he 
adds,  "that  you  are  falling  off  in  power :  but  I 
say   you   are   mellowing   and   maturing.      This 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

Middlemarch   strikes  me  as  being  the  ripened, 
perfected  fruit  of  your  genius." 


Her  face  lights  up  with  its  grave  smile,  and 
her  blue  eyes  brighten.  "Well,  it  ought  to  be  !" 
she  answers.  "  I  think  this  year's  end  finds  me 
enjoying  existence  more  than  ever  I  did  before, 
in  spite  of  the  loss  of  youth.  Study  is  a  keener 
delight  to  me  than  ever.  All  knowledge,  all 
thought,  all  achievement,  seems  more  precious 
and  enjoyable  to  me  than  ever  it  was  before  in 
life.  Besides,  the  world  is  so  intensely 
interesting ! " 

"You  have  helped  to  make  it  so,"  says 
Mr.  Lewes  rather  grimly.  "  Some  folks  would 
say  exactly  the  reverse." 

"It  is  a  world  of  struggle  and  endeavour, 
of  course,"  she  admits,  "and  we  have  had  a 
hard  fight,  up-hill,  up-hill  all  the  way.  But 
also  we  seem  to  have  attained  more  than  our 
due  share  of  happiness  and  prosperity  :  and  I 
should  be  vilely  ungrateful  if  I  did  not  attempt 
to  tender  back  something  to  life  of  all  that  it  has 
yielded  me.       I  always  want  to  feel   that   my 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

work  is  something,— however  small,  —  which 
wanted  to  be  done  in  this  world,  and  that  I  am 
just  the  organ  for  that  little  bit  of  work." 

"Little  bit  of  work,  indeed!"  and  he 
kisses  her  lips  into  silence.  The  lunch-bell 
rings,  and  they  leave  the  study  hand-in-hand. 
He  has  been  in  his  own  study  all  morning, 
hard  at  work  upon  abstruse  and  comparatively 
unpopular  books :  for,  as  he  cheerfully  grumbles, 
mere  philosophy  can  never  compete  with  fiction. 

In  the  afternoon,  after  a  short  rest,  George 
Eliot  goes  round  the  garden  and  surveys  with 
mild  regret  the  relics  of  departed  summer.  It 
is  strange  how  completely  she,  a  countrywoman 
born  and  bred,  steeped  in  the  provincialism 
of  the  shires,  has  become  acclimatized  and 
assimilated  to  London  life.  Occasionally  she 
longs  for  "a  house  with  some  shade  and  grass 
close  round  it,"  of  a  different  calibre  from  the 
shade  and  grass  of  St.  John's  Wood  ;  but  this 
is  a  very  transient  longing :  she  is  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  a  Londoner.  And  to 
open-air  nature  in  general,  may  be,  she  has  no 
very  ardent   attachment.     Wonderfully  as  she 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

can  paint  it  in  a  few  strong  lines  or  broad 
washes,  it  is  to  the  concrete  human  being, 
rather  than  to  the  abstract  landscape  element  in 
a  scene,  that  her  main  interest  is  attracted. 
And  although  for  animals  she  has  a  kindly  eye, 
and  especially  for  horses  and  dogs, — there  is  a 
canine  favourite  in  nearly  all  her  tales,  treated 
in  a  friendly,  sympathetic  manner, — yet  they 
play  a  very  subordinate  role  in  the  unfolding  of 
the  great  human  drama  wrought  out  upon  some 
small  provincial  stage. 


She  goes  indoors  to  her  big  double  drawing- 
room,  entering  by  the  long  low  window  which 
opens  into  the  garden.  The  room  is  decorated 
by  Owen  Jones,  and  all  around  upon  the  walls 
hang  Leighton's  illustrations  to  Romola.  In  the 
further  part  of  it  stands  the  grand  piano,  her 
solace  and  chief  joy,  and  she  sits  down  for  an 
hour's  good  practice.  George  Eliot  sets  music 
above  all  things  :  she  has  a  passionate  devotion 
to  it  such  as  no  words  can  express.  About 
eighteen  of  Beethoven's  Sonatas,  which  she 
performs  with  fine  power  and  taste,  are 
included  in   her  repertoire  :    and  she  specially 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

delights  in  Schubert's  songs.  When  outworn 
through  the  palpitation  and  excitement  which 
frequently  accrue  during  the  completion  of  a 
novel,  she  seeks  refuge  and  healing  in  waves  of 
lovely  sound  :  and  though  she  rarely  plays 
before  visitors,  she  loves  to  hear  great  music 
rendered  by  some  of  the  many  habitues  of 
her  Sunday  afternoons.  Music  is  a  potent 
factor  in  many  of  her  books, — it  is  always 
alluded  to  with  a  peculiar  pleasure  :  whether 
Stephen  and  Lucy,  in  The  Mill  on  the  Floss,  join 
in  the  charming  strains  of  "  Graceful  Consort," 
— and  the  author  observes  that  "the  sense  of 
mutual  fitness  that  springs  from  the  two  deep 
notes  fulfilling  expectation  just  at  the  right 
moment,  between  the  notes  of  the  silvery 
soprano,  from  the  peaceful  accord  of  descending 

thirds is    likely    to    supersede    any 

immediate  demand  for  less  impassioned  forms 
of  agreement," — or  whether,  as  in  the  touching 
pathos  of  Mr.  Gilfil's  Love  Story,  the  little  boy 
and  the  grown  man  are  spell-bound  by  the 
heroine's  sudden  restoration  to  song. 

"  Ozzy,  roaming  about  the  room  in  quest 
of  a  forbidden  pleasure,  came  to  the  harpsichord, 


MAYNARD  GILFIL  HEARS   CATERINA  SINGING. 

In  a  moment  her  fingers  were  wandering  with  their 
old  sweet  method  among  the  keys,  and  her  soul  was 
floating  in  its  true  familiar  element  of  delicious 
sound.  .  .  Maynard  thanked  God. 

(Mr.  GilfiVs  Love  Story.) 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE     ELIOT. 

and  struck  the  handle  of  his  whip  on  a  deep 
bass  note.  The  vibration  rushed  through 
Gaterina  like  an  electric  shock  :  it  seemed  as  if 
at  that  instant  a  new  soul  were  entering  into 
her,  and  filling  her  with  a  deeper,  more  signi- 
ficant life.  She  looked  round,  rose  from  the 
sofa,  and  walked  to  the  harpsichord.  In  a 
moment  her  fingers  were  wandering  with  their 
old  sweet  method  among  the  keys,  and  her  soul 
was  floating  in  its  true  familiar  element  of 
delicious  sound.  .  .  Maynard  thanked  God. 
An  active  power  was  reawakened,  and  must 
make  a  new  epoch  in  Caterina's  recovery. 
Presently  there  were  low  liquid  notes  blending 
themselves  with  the  harder  tones  of  the  instru- 
ment, and  gradually  the  pure  voice  swelled  into 
predominance." 

"There  are  stores  laid  up  in  our  human 
nature,"  so  George  Eliot  has  written,  "that 
one's  understanding  can  make  no  inventory 
of"  :  and  most  opulent  of  these  treasures  is  the 
storehouse  of  perfect  music. 

Presently  guests  begin  to  arrive, — devotees 
to  her  shrine.     This   is  not  the  chief  occasion 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

of  their   advent,    being   a   week-day  :    George 
Eliot's  Sunday-afternoon  receptions  are  famous 
throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  London, 
when,    "sometimes   preceded    by   a  small  and 
early  dinner  with  chosen  friends,"  a  continuous 
flow    of   company    sets    in.      All   the   choicest 
artistic  and  literary  spirits  of  the  'sixties  are  to 
be   encountered  there  :   sometimes,  as  Frederic 
Harrison  has  described  these  memorable  meet- 
ings,   "the   superb    Frederic    Leighton    would 
drop  in,  or  the  hearty  Robert  Browning,  with 
endless    anecdotes    and    happy    mots;    George 
Meredith,    the     inexhaustible,    and    the    mitts 
sapentia  of  Lecky  ;   the   first  Lord  Acton,  the 
omnivorous  student;  the  gentle  irony  of  Charles 
Bowen,  and  the  second  Lord  Lytton,  the  cosmo- 
politan courtier ;    the   jolly   rattle  of  Anthony 
Trollope  ;    the  ever-welcome  and  genial  Lord 
Houghton  ;  Lord  and  Lady  Amberley,  in  spite 
of  her  mother's  frowns  ;   that  most  thoughtful 
of  painters,  Frederic  Burton  ;  and  that  gentle, 
modest,  and  cultured  poet,   Leicester  Warren, 
last  Lord  de  Tabley.    .    .     George  du  Maurier 
would  sing  one  of  his  exquisite  comic   French 
songs,  or  G.  Lewes  and  Edward  Pigott  would 


A    DAY    WITH     GEORGE    ELIOT. 

act  an  impromptu  charade,  with  witty  dialogue 
invented  on  the  spur  of  the  moment." 

And  yet  George  Eliot  is  "  eminently  not  a 
typical  mistress  of  a  salon  :  "  it  has  always  been 
"  difficult  for  her  mentally,  to  move  from  one 
person  to  another":  she  has  seldom  "found 
the  effort  of  entertaining  compensated  by  the 
gain."  She  has  relied  almost  entirely  upon  the 
admirable  hospitality,  brilliant  wit  and  never- 
failing  kindness  of  Mr.  Lewes  to  sustain  the 
burden — for  burden  she  has  often  felt  it — of 
these  immensely  successful  gatherings.  The 
versatility,  vivacity  and  resource  of  Mr.  Lewes, 
who  is  "as  good  in  a  company  of  three  as  of 
thirty,"  has  supplied  every  social  quality  in 
which  Mrs.  Lewes  felt  herself  lacking. 

But  to-day  she  sits  in  her  low  arm-chair  at 
the  left-hand  side  of  the  fire,  and,  looking  up 
with  her  grave  yet  cordial  smile,  receives  some 
welcome  visitor,  and  beckons  him  to  the  chair 
beside  her.  Bending  her  majestic  head,  after 
her  whole  body,  eagerly  forward,  she  plunges 
into     animated     conversation,      exercising     a 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

strange  fascination  over  the  hearer  with  her 
low,  deep,  thrillingly  tender  tones,  and  with  the 
tremendous  reserve  power  that  one  feels  to  be 
latent  behind  her  sympathetic  sayings.  "Ideas," 
she  has  said,  "are  often  poor  guests:  our 
sun-filled  eyes  cannot  discern  them,  they 
pass  athwart  us  in  thin  vapour,  and  cannot 
make  themselves  felt.  But  sometimes  they  are 
made  flesh  .  .  .  they  touch  us  with  soft 
responsive  hands,  they  look  at  us  with  sad 
sincere  eyes,  and  speak  to  us  in  appealing  tones; 
they  are  clothed  in  a  living  human  soul,  with  all 
its  conflicts,  its  faith  and  its  love.  Then  their 
presence  is  a  power,  then  they  shake  us  like  a 
passion,  and  we  are  drawn  after  them  with 
gentle  compulsion,  as  flame  is  drawn  to  flame  " 
(Janet's  Repentance).  Upon  young  men  especi- 
ally, she  has  a  motherly,  magnetic  influence, 
which  at  times  assumes  a  half-divine  effect : 
they  treasure  up  each  sentence  dropped  from 
her  lips,  each  glance  of  her  penetrating  eyes. 
As  one  of  these  has  written  down  his  recollec- 
tions :  "  She  appeared  much  greater  than  her 
books.  Her  ability  seemed  to  shrink  beside 
her  moral  grandeur.  She  was  not  only  the  best, 
but   the  cleverest  woman  you  had   ever  met. 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE     ELIOT. 

You  never  dared  to  speak  to  her  of  her  books  : 
her  personality  was  so  much  more  impressive 
than  its  product." 

Yet  this  magnificent  personality  is  housed 
in  a  weak  and  failing  frame  :  and  when  the  last 
visitor  has  departed,  the  great  authoress  is 
racked  with  a  blinding  headache,  and  shivering 
with  stone-cold  feet.  She  takes  a  brisk  turn 
out-of-doors  in  the  cool  October  starlight,  well 
muffled  up,  on  Mr.  Lewes'  arm  :  the  crisp  and 
pleasant  night  is  full  of  healing  power.  Re- 
freshed and  invigorated,  yet  healthfully  drowsy, 
she  returns  home  and  sits  down  for  a  few 
minutes'  meditation  before  addressing  herself 
to  sleep.  "I  should  like,"  she  murmurs  with 
half-closed  eyes,  "  to  take  long  doses  of  dolce 
far  niente,  and  be  in  no  hurry  about  anything  in 
this  'varsal  world.  Do  we  not  commit  our- 
selves to  sleep  and  so  resign  all  care  for 
ourselves  every  night — lay  ourselves  gently  on 
the  bosom  of  nature  and  God  ?  " 

She  endeavours  to  put  away  all  tired 
attempts  towards  mental  activity — yet,  in  spite 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

of  herself,  her  fancy  obstinately  insists  on 
recurring  to  those  poems  which  have  occupied 
so  much  of  her  time  and  thought  of  late, — The 
Spanish  Gypsy,  to  wit,  and  Jubal.  Hardly  can 
she  be  termed  a  poet  in  the  highest  sense  ;  she 
is  the  poet  made,  not  born ;  her  verse  is  con- 
structed, not  inspired  ;  it  is  deficient  in  fire, 
passion,  melody  ;  yet  there  is  an  amount  of 
"  fundamental  brain-work"  about  it  which  will 
ensure  its  survival  when  more  sensuously- 
beautiful  strains  have  perished. 


She  takes  up  from  the  bedside-table  her 
constant  companion,  the  Imitation  of  Christ: 
that  "chronicle,"  as  she  has  called  it,  "written 
down  by  the  hands  that  waited  for  the  heart's 
prompting  ;  a  solitary,  hidden  anguish,  struggle, 
trust  and  triumph,  —  not  written  on  velvet 
cushions  to  teach  endurance  to  those  who  are 
still  treading  with  bleeding  feet  on  the  stones  : 
it  remains  a  lasting  record  of  human  needs  and 
human  consolations,  it  works  miracles  to  this 
day,  turning  bitter  waters  into  sweetness,  while 
expensive  sermons  and  records,  newly  issued, 
leave   all   things   as   they   were   before."      She 


A    DAY    WITH     GEORGE     ELIOT. 

turns  the  well-worn  leaves  with  loving  rever- 
ence, and  the  sublime  ideal  there  upheld  sinks 
deep  into  her  weary  consciousness.  "Let  the 
same  mind  be  in  you  as  was  also  in  Christ  Jesus." 
"  I  believe,"  whispers  the  woman  who  cannot 
profess  or  call  herself  a  Christian,  "  the  answer 
to  this  will  be  uttered  more  and  more  fervently 
among  all  posterities  for  evermore."  And, 
stretching  out  towards  nebulous  heights  of 
aspiration  where  she  may  yet  attain  to  some 
hint  of  that  Divine  Likeness,  she  hears  her  own 
lines,  running  noble  as  the  sweep  and  surge 
of  some  wide  river, — a  current  upon  which  she 
drifts  into  the  Debateable  Lands  this  side  of 
profound  oblivion. 


"  O,  may  I  join  the  choir  invisible 

Of  those  immortal  dead  who  live  again 

In  minds  made  better  by  their  presence:  live 

In  pulses  stirred  to  generosity, 

In  deeds  of  daring  rectitude,  in  scorn 

For  miserable  aims  that  end  with  self. 

May  I  reach 

That  purest  heaven,  be  to  other  souls 
The  cup  of  strength  in  some  great  agony, 


A    DAY    WITH    GEORGE    ELIOT. 

Enkindle  generous  ardour,  feed  pure  love, 
Beget  the  smiles  that  have  no  cruelty — 
Be  the  sweet  presence  of  a  good  diffused, 
And  in  diffusion  ever  more  intense, 
So  shall  I  join  the  choir  invisible, 
Whose  music  is  the  gladness  of  the  world." 


Printed  by  Percy  Lund,  Humphries  &  Co.,  Ltd., 
Bradford  and  I,ondon.  4883 


^SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

A  A         001  405  898  6 


